you've been worried about the deficit. what do you say to this argument that trying to reduce the deficits in europe has been a disaster? it's slowed growth, slowed tax reeve news and increased the deficit? >> let me just say i am not in favor of reducing the deficit now. the short term i am not in favor of reducing the deficit. but i do think there have to be some longer-term plans that give the financial markets some degree of confidence that we're not just going to blow apart. i think this is something on the longer term which is what bowles-simpson was all about, something which i favored totally. so i think that was a combination of including longer-term control over some of our big expenditures, particularly in health care. and that is something we have to do. i think the president could get some things if, in fact, he addressed some of these longer term issues but he walked away from that and there's no confidence that he really cares about it. >> let's talk about common -- noneconomic things. i would have thought y